


About Time

by notionally



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: (that part is canon), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Bickering, Changkyun is an astrophysics nerd, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, kihyun is bad at feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-07 18:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19474840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notionally/pseuds/notionally
Summary: Kihyun makes a wish on a shooting star, to see what his future holds. He doesn’t expect it to come true, but it does, and now he doesn’t know how to deal with the knowledge that he’s going to be engaged to Minhyuk in five years’ time.





	About Time

The stars are scattered across the sky like dust. Kihyun thinks, if he stares at them for long enough, that he can see them moving. Or rather, he can sense the earth turning, and the stars in the sky silently watching.

He stretches his legs out in the back of Hyunwoo’s old pick-up, sneakered feet poking out the end of the thick tartan blanket. His shoes nudge into Minyuk’s thighs.

“Oi,” Minhyuk says, “don’t kick me.”

Kihyun grins and pushes his toe out to prod at Minhyuk again. He gets his feet swatted away, but only half-heartedly, because Minhyuk is distracted. Changkyun’s curled up in Minhyuk’s side, head stubbornly turned up to the sky.

“How long more?” Minhyuk asks.

Changkyun makes a displeased grunting noise. “Soon,” he says, “you’ll know when it happens.”

“Better be soon.” Jooheon juts his lower lip out in a pout as he tugs his blanket around his shoulders more tightly. “I’m cold.” Hoseok mirrors his pout and shuffles closer, the two of them looking pathetically miserable. Kihyun suppresses a laugh at the sight.

They’d driven almost an hour out of campus at Changkyun’s behest, to find a spot with minimal light pollution. Usually, they don’t bother with Changkyun’s weird astrophysics whims — not after he’d once made them stay up all night to look for a planet that ended up looking like nothing more than a slightly reddish star — but at the mention of a ‘meteor shower’ Minhyuk had immediately perked up. And insisted that all of them head out together, chasing the stars.

“The whole wishing on a shooting star thing doesn’t work, you know this, right?” Hyungwon asks sleepily, from where he’s curled up in a corner of the pick-up. Kihyun wasn’t aware that Hyungwon was still awake, startles slightly to hear him speak.

“It doesn’t work if you don’t believe in it,” says Minhyuk huffily.

Kihyun snorts. “Just because I believe in Bigfoot doesn’t make him real.”

This earns him a glare from Minhyuk. “Don’t come running to me when Bigfoot tries to eat you.”

“Why would Bigfoot try to eat me?”

“Because you disrespected him.”

“That’s not how Bigfoot works—”

“Shh!” A sharp hiss from Changkyun silences Kihyun. “It’s starting!” Changkyun points at the sky, which is full of stars, none of which are in any way, shape, or form, _shooting._

“I don’t see any—”

Kihyun gets cut off again, this time by Minhyuk shushing him loudly. “Shut up!” he says in an excited stage whisper. “I saw one!”

Even Jooheon and Hoseok have perked up now. Hyungwon’s opened both of his eyes, but hasn’t moved from where he’s comfortably swaddled in his blanket. Hyunwoo’s craning his neck back awkwardly, but he mostly just looks amused at Minhyuk’s enthusiasm.

Kihyun turns his gaze to the sky. He’s about to complain that he doesn’t see anything again, when a quick flash of light in the corner of his eye catches his attention. His heart, despite itself, skips a beat.

“Make a wish!” Minhyuk cries out. “Make a wish, quick!”

A wish. Kihyun wants so many things, that he doesn’t even know what he wants anymore. He’s in his third year of university, just over a year away from graduation, and still he has no clue what he’s going to do with his life. 

Hoseok giggles at the sky, littered with tiny specks of light that keep zooming across their field of vision. “I wish to always be happy!” he calls out in delight, throwing his arms out wide and almost elbowing Jooheon in the face.

 _“Not out loud,”_ Minhyuk scolds. “It won’t come true if you say it out loud.”

“Says who?”

“It’s basic wish knowledge!” 

“I wish to always have good food to eat,” Hyunwoo says.

Minhyuk just sighs and leans against Changkyun, an expression of long-suffering exhaustion on his face. “Fine, don’t have your wishes granted, see if I care.” He squeezes his eyes shut and clasps his hands together beneath his chin, like he’s in prayer. Next to him, Changkyun shrugs and does the same, the two of them looking for all the world like an extraordinarily pious pair of university students.

“I wish,” Kihyun says, not loudly but perfectly audibly, “to see what my future holds.”

Minhyuk stretches out his leg and kicks him. “Not out loud,” he repeats. He’s looking at Kihyun with odd seriousness. “That’s a stupid wish, anyway.”

“How is my wish stupid? Hyunwoo hyung wished for _food!”_

Hyunwoo beams at them. “Hey, food is important to me.”

“Because,” Minhyuk says, folding his arms across his chest, and ignoring Hyunwoo, “you’ll find out what your future holds in due course. Why would you waste a wish on that?”

Kihyun wrinkles up his nose at Minhyuk. “Because I want to know _now.”_

“And do what? You won’t be able to change anything.”

“Says you.”

Changkyun clears his throat with an air of self-importance. Kihyun looks at him. He’s straightening the knot of an imaginary tie at his throat. “Actually, Minhyuk hyung has a point,” he says, “most quantum theories view time as the fourth dimension, which means that it is functionally equivalent to what we view as three-dimensional space, except in a dimension we cannot perceive, only experience.”

Kihyun blinks. “What?”

“Kkungie, in plain words, please,” Jooheon says, frowning in faux-annoyance.

Changkyun rolls his eyes. “It means that everything that has ever happened and that will ever happen, is all happening right now,” he says, which doesn’t really clear anything up, but he looks like he’s already physically paining himself to dumb the science down this much, so Kihyun doesn’t mention his confusion. “So there’s really nothing any of us can do to change anything about the future, except whatever we were already going to do anyway.”

“Exactly,” says Minhyuk, nodding sagely. “Whatever is meant to happen, will happen. You can’t escape destiny.”

“That’s — really not at all what I was saying.” Changkyun looks incredibly put-out by Minhyuk’s interpretation of his science lecture.

Minhyuk ignores him. “Point being, Ki made a stupid wish,” he says with a tone of finality. “Why waste a wish on something you can’t change?”

“Curiosity?” Kihyun suggests, narrowing his eyes at Minhyuk. “Peace of mind?”

“Pah.” Minhyuk waves a hand in the space between them dismissively. “You have to wish for something to _happen.”_

“What did you wish for then, if you’re so smart?”

Minhyuk makes a face at him. “I can’t say,” he snaps, like it should be obvious. “Were you not listening to me? I said, you can’t say it out loud or it won’t come true!”

Kihyun grins at Minhyuk’s annoyed huff. “I never listen to you.”

“I’m sorry,” Minhyuk says, looking around, “is someone speaking? I can’t hear anything.”

“You’re an idiot,” Kihyun snarks, but Minhyuk continues pretending not to be able to hear him, and so Kihyun just laughs and tips his head back to look up at the sky again. There are far fewer shooting stars now, just an odd one here and there, every thirty seconds or so. The meteor shower is ending.

Kihyun still doesn’t believe in wishing on a star. But, just in case — he repeats the wish again, just in his heart, just to himself. 

_I wish to see what my future holds._

A star twinkles above him, and shoots across the sky like a streak of silver.

* * *

When Kihyun wakes up the next morning, he feels like he’s been asleep for years. It’s not like him to sleep in, but by the time Hyunwoo had driven them all back from their star-gazing adventure, it was already three in the morning. He yawns and stretches, the sunshine warm on his face. 

Then he opens his eyes, and realises that something is off.

Firstly, and most concerningly, is the fact that he doesn’t recognise the room he’s in. It’s a bright, elegantly decorated room, but not one that he’s ever seen before. He runs his hands along the sheets — smooth and luxurious, nothing like the scratchy ones he has on his own bed. And certainly nothing that any of his friends, all of them dirt-poor university students like himself, would be able to afford.

Kihyun checks himself over. He’s still in his pyjamas from the night before, a hoodie over a t-shirt and sweatpants. Nothing unusual there. So he steps carefully out of bed, eyes darting around the room, ready for something to jump out at him. But nothing does, and Kihyun takes to exploring the room a little more carefully. It’s not a hotel room, that much he’s sure of. There are too many personal belongings cluttering every surface — watches and rings scattered on the dresser, a grey coat tossed over the armchair in the corner, a small pile of books on one of the nightstands.

And some pictures, in frames, on the shelf by the window. Kihyun walks over quickly, once he spots them.

The first picture that catches his eye is one of him and Minhyuk, which he remembers them taking in their first year of university. A carnival had come into town, and they’d gone together. The picture is a selfie of them sharing a stick of cotton candy bigger than their head. He remembers the day clearly, remembers taking the picture. But why is it here?

Kihyun sets it back down on the shelf, picks up the one next to it. Another one of him and Minhyuk, but this one he doesn’t recognise. They’re standing in front of what looks to be the Eiffel Tower, but Kihyun’s never been to France before, and he doesn’t think Minhyuk has either. He blinks in confusion. 

The third photo on the shelf is a group photo — all seven of them, in crisp suits. With their arms around each other, some of them holding glasses of champagne. It looks like they’re at a wedding. But they’ve never attended a wedding together before. And whose wedding is it?

Kihyun feels his head starting to spin. This is too weird. His brain starts to come up with explanations for what’s going on, but he pushes them down. There has to be a simple answer, he thinks to himself. 

Then he hears a voice coming from outside the room, and he jumps, almost dropping the picture frame he’s holding in the process. He clutches one hand to his chest, and carefully puts the picture back down. He tiptoes over to the door, presses his ear to it.

Someone’s singing softly, and it takes Kihyun only a second to recognise the voice.

He throws open the door and storms out. “Lee Minhyuk,” he shouts, “if this is some stupid prank of yours—”

His tirade is cut off by Minhyuk letting out the most ear-splitting shriek Kihyun’s ever heard from him — and that’s saying something. It startles Kihyun so much he almost trips on his own feet. 

“What is wrong with you?” Kihyun asks, staggering against the wall for balance. “And where am I?”

Minhyuk is just staring at him in wide-eyed horror. “Holy shit,” he exhales, “Ki was right.”

Kihyun frowns. “Why are you talking about me like I’m not here—” he starts, then breaks off in the middle of the sentence. Minhyuk’s unmistakably Minhyuk, to be sure. But he’s also different. For one, his hair is black — Kihyun doesn’t think he’s seen Minhyuk’s hair its natural colour since they were in high school together. For another, he’s dressed in a very crisp pair of black slacks, and a stylish forest green jumper over a collared shirt. Kihyun doesn’t think Minhyuk even owns clothes that professional.

“Wait,” Kihyun says, even though Minhyuk isn’t doing anything except staring at him. He takes a small step back, then another. “What’s going on?”

Minhyuk forces a smile. It comes out looking like a grimace. “I think you should have a seat,” he says, gesturing warily to the sleek, grey sofa in front of him. Kihyun hesitates, but takes a few shaky steps closer and slowly lowers himself down to sitting. He blinks up at Minhyuk, heart pounding. 

“What’s going on?” Kihyun asks again, more urgently this time.

The pained smile on Minhyuk’s face falters slightly. “Uh,” he says, “would you like to have some tea?” 

* * *

“This is a dream.” Kihyun stands up, shaking his head. Then he sits down again, and barks out a laugh. “This has got to be a dream. That’s what this is.”

Minhyuk makes a face. “Unfortunately not,” he says. “Ki always told me this would happen, he just didn’t say when.” He pauses, then gasps. “I bet he _knew_ it would be today, that’s why he said he was going to be out all day! The traitor!”

Kihyun blinks. “What day is today?”

Minhyuk tells him the date, then immediately slaps his hand over his mouth. “Ah, fuck, I shouldn’t have told you, that’s how you knew it was today,” he grumbles to himself. “Stupid Changkyun and his stupid _‘everything is happening at the same time and you can’t change anything’_ theory.”

“What are you talking about!” Kihyun’s voice comes out more like a strangled screech. 

Minhyuk groans and rubs his face with his hands. “I can’t believe I have to do this all by myself,” he mutters darkly, “Yoo Kihyun, I’m going to murder you.”

 _“I’m Yoo Kihyun,”_ Kihyun cries out. He knows what Minhyuk means but he refuses to accept it. There has to be some other explanation.

“Not you!” Minhyuk snaps, then cocks his head the the side, brow furrowed. “Well, yes, you, I suppose. Just not you _yet._ You know? Future-you.”

“Stop that!” Kihyun leaps to his feet. “Stop. Just, no. This isn’t real.”

Minhyuk gestures at Kihyun placatingly, with his palms facing to the ground. Kihyun drops back into the sofa reluctantly, mostly because he doesn’t know what else to do or where else to go. He clenches his fists on his knees.

“Look,” Minhyuk says, “according to Ki, or, um you, I guess — anyway, apparently, this all happened that night we went to watch the shooting stars. Do you remember?”

 _“Yes!”_ Kihyun wails. “That was _last night!”_

Minhyuk grimaces. “Ah, right.” He rubs the back of his neck and grins sheepishly. “Well, anyway, Ki thinks that this happened because he wished to see his future.”

“That was me! I wished that!”

“Yes, I understand,” Minhyuk says, with the air of a preschool teacher explaining something to a child for the tenth time. “When I say Ki, I mean past-Kihyun. Which is you.”

Kihyun feels like he’s going to barf. “So you’re telling me that this is — five years into the future from that night?”

Minhyuk nods. “Approximately, yes.”

“Okay.” Kihyun furrows his brow, trying to think this through. His head hurts. “Why am I — what are you doing here, then?”

Minhyuk — _future-Minhyuk,_ apparently — looks confused. “What am I doing in the future?” he asks. “Were you expecting me to be dead?”

Kihyun glares at Minhyuk. Even (supposedly) five years into the future, Minhyuk is just as aggravating. “No, what are you doing in my house?” he asks, snappishly. “Or, like — is this your house? Why would I time travel to your house?”

“Ah.” Realisation dawns on Minhyuk. He clears his throat, drums his fingers on his knees. “Now. How do I explain this.”

“Are we roommates?” Kihyun wrinkles his nose in distaste. If there’s one thing that’s comforting about this situation, it’s that he’s still able to heap playful disdain upon Minhyuk. He’s been doing that since high school, and he can keep on doing that forever, in whatever time period he finds himself. “God, you’d think after five years I would have managed to get rid of you.”

Minhyuk doesn’t rise to the bait, though. He just laughs awkwardly. “Roommates,” he repeats, “I guess we’re roommates, in a sense.”

Kihyun narrows his eyes at Minhyuk. “In a sense? What does that mean?”

“You have to promise not to freak out,” Minhyuk says, in a way that only makes Kihyun want to freak out even more.

“Lee Minhyuk, seriously—”

“Okay, fine!” Minhyuk shouts, shaking his head furiously. “I’ll tell you. I’m your, um — I mean, you’re my — wow, this is weird to say to you when you look five years younger—”

Kihyun opens his mouth to snap at Minhyuk again, but Minhyuk finishes his sentence, and Kihyun falls silent. He isn’t often rendered speechless by Minhyuk.

“Kihyun and I,” Minhyuk says, “we’re boyfriends.”

Kihyun just stares at Minhyuk for a long, long time. All his words have dried up in his mouth.

“Oh wait, no — that’s not right,” Minhyuk adds suddenly, looking contemplative, and Kihyun heaves a sigh of relief, because for a second there he thought Minhyuk had said they were _boyfriends,_ isn’t that funny— 

“We’re not boyfriends anymore,” Minhyuk says, grinning at Kihyun, “we’re _fiances._ We just got engaged!”

Kihyun sinks back into the sofa. He was wrong. This isn’t a dream. It’s a nightmare. And he needs to wake up.

He slaps himself across the face. Hard. 

It hurts.

Minhyuk stares at him. “That’s not going to work.”

* * *

The second time Kihyun wakes up, after the night they’d spent star-gazing, he’s in his own bedroom. 

He lies in his bed for a while, flat on his back and staring at the ceiling. His sheets are scratchy against his skin, and he can see the stain on the ceiling in the corner by the window from when Changkyun had decided to do the mentos-in-coke experiment in his room. The sun is bright, but it isn’t streaming in — the building next door is too close, and blocks out most of the direct light. 

He’s never been so happy to be in his crappy university dorm before.

“Just a dream,” Kihyun mutters to himself. “Just a weird, extremely vivid dream concocted by my subconscious.”

Except now he’s thinking about the fact that his subconscious apparently concocted a dream in which he was _engaged_ to _Lee Minhyuk,_ of all people, and Kihyun feels queasy. He groans, flips onto his stomach, and buries his face in the pillow. 

“Stop it,” he hisses to himself. “No more.”

When his phone buzzes, right next to his pillow, Kihyun startles so hard he thinks he pulls a muscle in his neck. He rubs at it with one hand, and picks up his phone with the other. Looks at the screen, then immediately presses the phone face down into the bed in panic.

One new message. From Lee Minhyuk.

“Seriously, stop it,” he scolds himself. It’s fine. He and Minhyuk are friends. They text all the time. It’s not evidence of anything. 

He picks up the phone again, looks at the message.

_Yo, you okay? You were sneezing a lot on the way back last night, did you catch a cold?_

Kihyun stares at it. He can’t tell if it’s normal for Minhyuk to be this concerned about him. They’re friends, after all, and have been since high school. But they also bicker a lot. Like, all the time.

He’s probably overthinking this. Kihyun shakes his head to clear it, starts tapping out a reply. 

_I’m fine,_ he writes, and then, _since when do you care so much?_

That’s good. It’s light-hearted, teasing, back to their usual push-and-pull dynamic.

Then his phone starts ringing, and Kihyun screams.

“Get a fucking grip, Yoo Kihuyn,” he mutters to himself, darkly, picking his phone up off the floor where he’d chucked it in a panic. Thankfully, it looks unharmed. Less thankfully, it’s still ringing, an ugly selfie of Minhyuk covering the entire screen. Kihyun lets out a short scream of frustration, then picks up the call.

“I always care about you,” shouts Minhyuk, the second the call connects. “How dare you imply otherwise!” It’s loud, wherever Minhyuk is. Kihyun can hear the wind blowing into the speakers. On top of Minhyuk’s yelling, it’s a lot to take in. 

“Good morning to you too,” Kihyun grumbles.

“I know Kkung has labs all day today, so I wanted to make sure you were still alive,” Minhyuk says, ignoring Kihyun’s greeting. “I’m out getting lunch, do you want me to get you something?”

Kihyun really, really doesn’t want to see Minhyuk right now. Not with the dream he’d just had. “No thank you,” he says quickly.

“You sure?”

“Seriously,” Kihyun replies, a little snappishly — to disguise his panic. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“I’m always nice to you, you idiot,” comes Minhyuk’s response, as self-contradictory as it is. “I’m your _best friend.”_

Despite everything, Kihyun snorts with laughter. “You’re my enemy,” he corrects. “Frenemy, at best.”

Minhyuk laughs, loud and bright and unrestrained. “Well, Changkyun is my friend,” he says, “and he for some reason likes you. So I’m keeping you alive to keep him happy.”

“Thanks, I feel so appreciated.”

“Don’t thank me yet — my loyalties to Changkyun don’t lie that deep, I’d still kill you without batting an eye — oh, shut up, it’s my turn to order.”

Kihyun rolls his eyes. He can picture Minhyuk, standing in line at some cafe, yapping away noisily at his phone. Probably dressed in his usual attire of garishly bright hoodie and ripped jeans, maybe with a bum bag slung across his body. No professional slacks or classy jumpers in sight.

“Goodbye, Lee Minhyuk,” Kihyun says. 

“Bye, dumbass!” comes Minhyuk’s chirpy reply. 

* * *

Kihyun opens the door to his flat, one week later, and almost drops his groceries on the floor in surprise. He manages not to, but he does let out a small scream of alarm, which earns him a weird look from Minhyuk.

“What’s wrong with you?” Minhyuk asks, raising one eyebrow at him from where he’s standing, in Kihyun’s kitchen, looking eerily reminiscent of how Kihyun had found Minhyuk in his weird dream-future. He has to do a double take to check that Minhyuk’s hair is still silver, and not black.

But that’s neither here nor there. Kihyun grimaces and sets his bags of shopping down on the counter. “I should be asking you that,” he grumbles, “why are you in my house?”

“Gaming with Kkungie,” Minhyuk replies. He finishes buttering the slice of toast he’s holding, takes a large bite from the corner. “But that little disaster of a human realised he’d forgotten to submit a lab report so he ran out to do that.”

Kihyun stares at Minhyuk as he speaks. He’s the same old Minhyuk, youthful and chaotic and buzzing with life, but now that Kihyun’s met — _dreamt of_ — future Minhyuk, he can’t help seeing the little hints of the man that Minhyuk might grow up to be. Where Minhyuk in high school had been constantly fidgeting, impossible to hold still, Minhyuk now is slightly more mellow. Still overflowing with energy, no doubt, but there’s an internal gravity to him now in the way he holds himself, like he’s no longer so worried about what other people think about him. His eyes don’t dart about with the anxiety of someone watching for how people are reacting to him. He leans against the kitchen counter, nibbling on his slice of toast, completely and unapologetically occupying the space he takes up.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Minhyuk touches a finger to the corner of his lips. “Do I have something on my face?”

Kihyun coughs, tears his gaze away. He unpacks the groceries with furious intensity, pulling cereal boxes and cans of beans out of the shopping bags. “No,” he says sharply, “you’re just so ugly I couldn’t help staring.”

Laughing, Minhyuk bumps his hip against Kihyun’s. “You and I both know that’s not true,” he replies, bubbling with confidence. That’s another thing. Minhyuk’s confidence used to feel hollow, like a veneer over something empty and needy inside. Now it feels more real. Substantial. Less performative.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kihyun lies. He turns away from Minhyuk under the pretext of putting things away into the cupboards.

There’s a pause. Minhyuk wanders out into the living room, but Kihyun can feel him staring. The silence prickles at the back of his neck, and Kihyun is on the verge of blurting out something — anything — to break it, when Minhyuk finally says, “You told me I was pretty in high school.”

That’s not what Minhyuk had meant to say. But they’ve promised not to talk about the other thing, so they don’t. Even if it’s hanging in the air between them, as it sometimes does. 

Kihyun turns around. “Well, you’re getting uglier,” he says. Trying to strong-arm the conversation back into safe territory. “It’s like reverse puberty. Or the opposite of a glow-up. A glow-down.”

A flicker of something crosses Minhyuk’s face, too quickly for Kihyun to identify. But it rattles in his chest. He pushes it down, forcing a smirk onto his face as he crosses his arms in front of himself, waits for Minhyuk to reply.

Which Minhyuk does, with an exaggerated scoff. “As if,” he says, flipping an imaginary mane of long hair behind one shoulder. “I’m aging like a fine wine. You won’t be able to resist future-me.”

Kihyun chokes on an inhale, splutters ungracefully. “I won’t be able to resist—” he coughs out, thumping himself on the chest. “Ha-ha,” he says, somewhat robotically. “Very funny.”

Minhyuk eyes him oddly. “What is up with you today? You’re being very weird.”

“Nothing is up with me.” _Except for the fact that I can’t stop thinking about how I met future-you and he’s engaged to future-me,_ Kihyun’s inner voice mutters to himself darkly, _and even though I know it’s a dream, it’s still freaking me out._

Minhyuk looks completely unconvinced by Kihyun’s response. He opens his mouth to say something, and Kihyun’s already starting to panic, when the door to the flat slams open to reveal an extremely sweaty Changkyun.

“I made it!” he declares. “I had to run all the way to the faculty building to make the deadline but I made it!”

Kihyun goggles at him. “Did you run all the way back as well?”

“Yeah,” pants out Changkyun, bending over, hands on his knees. His face is pale, but splotched in places with pink.

“Why did you have to run _back?”_ Minhyuk asks, half-laughing, half-scolding.

“I was pumped full of adrenaline from making the deadline!” Changkyun looks like he might pass out at any second. Kihyun fetches a glass of water and hurries over to hand it to him. The kid really needs to exercise more.

He can feel Minhyuk looking at him. He wants to ask what’s wrong, ask Minhyuk what he’s thinking that’s making his face screw up like that. The words are tingling at the tip of his tongue. 

But then Changkyun is excitedly plonking himself down on the sofa and powering up the game console. Minhyuk sighs, turns away, and once again, Kihyun’s missed his chance.

* * *

Minhyuk heads back into the bedroom to change out of his work clothes, and Kihyun takes the chance to wander around the living room. He feels like he’s moving through an almost solid fog, pushing his way through to take in the little hints of the life this Minhyuk and this Kihyun are supposedly living. 

Photos of them line the shelves — them on holidays, them celebrating special occasions, them wearing party hats and what looks to be Hyunwoo’s thirtieth birthday. In all of the pictures, Kihyun thinks he looks disgustingly happy and in love. He’s seen that look on his face before. It prickles in the back of his mind.

There are a pair of shoes by the door, probably the ones Minhyuk had just kicked off when he’d arrived home. Kihyun resists the urge to pick them up and place them on the shoe rack, where all the other shoes are neatly lined up. 

“I’m dreaming,” he says to himself, staring at the displaced shoes. This feels too much like how he thinks his life would be, _if_ he were going out with Minhyuk. Except he’s not, and he won’t be, because this is a dream. “This is a dream.”

“You’re not dreaming.” 

Kihyun whirls around to see Minhyuk walking back out of the bedroom, in a loose t-shirt and a pair of shorts, hair slightly ruffled. He looks so much like the Minhyuk that Kihyun is used to, that Kihyun doesn’t know what to say.

Minhyuk ignores the fact that Kihyun is staring openly at him, and flops into one of the armchairs around the coffee table. “At least, I don’t _think_ you’re dreaming.” He sighs, like _he’s_ the one who’s being terribly inconvenienced here.

“You would say that, though, wouldn’t you?” Kihyun questions suspiciously, returning to his seat on the sofa. “That’s exactly what you would say if you were a creation of my subconscious brain.”

Minhyuk quirks an eyebrow at Kihyun. “You think your subconscious brain created a dream in which you were engaged to me?” he teases, and the tone of his voice is so incredibly like the Minhyuk that Kihyun knows that it startles him. Minhyuk — future-Minhyuk, dream-Minhyuk, whatever-this-is-Minhyuk — chuckles lowly. “That’s surprising, for someone who seemed so vehemently against the idea.”

“I _am_ against the idea.” Kihyun purses his lips. “But I would rather it be a product of my imagination than a vision of my future.”

“I should be offended, but thankfully, Ki told me you would be like this.” Minhyuk leans back in the sculptural armchair that doesn’t look particularly comfortable, looking far too pleased with himself. Kihyun wonders idly which of them picked out the armchair, in this completely made-up, entirely fictitious, future of theirs. Mostly to distract himself from the way Minhyuk’s eyeing him up, like a jaguar about to pounce on its prey.

Kihyun opens his mouth to question this, when he notices a scrawl of ink across Minhyuk’s thigh. “Did you—” he points, eyes widening in surprise, “did you get a tattoo?”

Minhyuk looks down, like he’s startled by the question. “Oh, yeah,” he says, grinning. His rubs one hand over the monochrome design of the whale on his leg. “Got it a few years back. You like it?”

“That’s it,” Kihyun says, throwing his head back and laughing, “that well and truly settles it. This is definitely a dream.”

“Why? Because of my tattoo?”

Kihyun folds his arms across his chest and grins smugly at Minhyuk, like he’s won a debate through sheer ingenuity. “Correct,” he says. “Because Minhyuk would _never_ get a tattoo.”

“Yes, he would,” replies Minhyuk, before he makes a face and shakes his head. “I mean, _I would._ Because that’s me. Minhyuk.”

“I’ve known Minhyuk for almost a decade,” Kihyun says, “why wouldn’t he tell me if he wanted a tattoo?”

Minhyuk shrugs. “I’ve always wanted this tattoo,” he says, glancing down at his leg. When he looks up again, something inscrutable clouds his expression. Kihyun’s seen this face before. It still aches, like it always did. He wants to blink, look away, but he can’t.

“I never told you,” Minhyuk says, pointedly using the first- and second-person pronouns, to Kihyun’s great displeasure, “because you never asked.”

“So you would have told me, if I’d asked?”

“You know I would,” Minhyuk says. His voice has that tang of bittersweet memory. “I would tell you anything, if you asked.”

That’s always been the problem, hasn’t it? Kihyun’s never asked.

* * *

At the end of their first year of university, Minhyuk moved out of their two-person flat. 

“Jackson and the guys want me to move into their shared house,” Minhyuk explained. He was looking down, avoiding eye contact, in that way he always did when he wasn’t quite telling the whole truth, but wanted you to call him out on it.

Kihyun knew this, of course. And, knowing this, there are a lot of things Kihyun could have asked. For example: _Do you really not want to live with me anymore?_ Or: _What can I do to make you stay?_

Or, even, the one question that Kihyun hadn’t been able to stop thinking about: _If I said I was sorry, if I took it all back — would you forgive me?_

But Kihyun didn’t ask any questions. Kihyun already knew the answers to his questions. He was just too afraid to hear them.

* * *

Minhyuk spends a lot of time at Kihyun and Changkyun’s flat. It makes sense — he used to live here, after all. But it didn’t always use to be this way. There was a period of time, right after Minhyuk had moved out, where Kihyun didn’t see him much at all. The fear of losing Minhyuk completely had almost prompted him to say something, but in the end, Kihyun had remained silent. And Minhyuk had, ultimately, come back, all sunshine smiles and tinkling laughter, and it was like nothing had changed between them.

Not to mention the fact that, even though Changkyun was the one replacing Minhyuk in the flat, and that might have caused some weirdness or tension, Minhyuk and Changkyun ended up getting on so well that sometimes Kihyun feels like he’s the odd one out. 

“And then,” Minhyuk is saying emphatically now, standing in the kitchen helping to prepare dinner for the three of them, “Jackson brought Mark over and they had such loud sex I was awake until two in the morning.”

Kihyun splutters out a laugh. “Shouldn’t you be used to that by now?”

Minhyuk waves the knife he’s using to slice carrots in the air. “You’d think! But they must have been trying something new, because there was a _lot_ more yelling than usual.”

“Don’t wave the knife like that,” Kihyun scolds, flinching at Minhyuk’s blatant disregard for kitchen safety. Minhyuk makes no indication that he’s heard Kihyun, but he goes back to dutifully slicing the carrots, which is all Kihyun can ask for.

“Sometimes I wish I’d stayed here, with you,” Minhyuk says, suddenly, head bowed over the chopping board.

Kihyun freezes. It’s been more than a year since Minhyuk left. They hardly ever mention the fact that they used to live together, and definitely never, ever with the tone of regret that’s tingeing Minhyuk’s voice.

“Don’t joke,” Kihyun replies, as nonchalantly as he can manage. He focuses his attention back on the soup bubbling in the pot, focuses on slowly stirring it in even, clockwise circles.

“I mean it.”

Kihyun sets the ladle down, resting against the inner rim of the pot, but he doesn’t turn to face Minhyuk. “You’re the one who wanted to leave.” He doesn’t mention the fact that they both know why Minhyuk chose to leave. That it was the only option he had left if he wanted to protect his heart. The only option that Kihyun had left him.

Minhyuk laughs loudly — too loudly, too abruptly, to be natural. Kihyun doesn’t point it out.

“You never had noisy sex in the bedroom next to mine,” Minhyuk says. Kihyun turns to see Minhyuk grinning. “You never even brought anyone home.”

“Shut up,” Kihyun says, “I brought people home.” Even though he didn’t, not really. Still doesn’t. 

Minhyuk hums, ignoring Kihyun. “Except for that brief dalliance with Yoongi, of course. But he was _really_ quiet. Like scarily quiet. Was he even alive?”

Kihyun shoves Minhyuk on the shoulder, to peals of laughter. “Shut _up!”_

Minhyuk had gone on lots of dates, when they’d lived together. But he hardly ever brought anyone home either. Kihyun wonders if that’s changed now. He wonders if it would have changed, had Minhyuk not moved out. He wonders if he has any right to wonder.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” The words are out of Kihyun’s mouth before he even really processes that he’s spoken them. He blinks to himself. 

“Mm,” comes Minhyuk’s reply. “What?”

“Do you ever, like — wonder,” Kihyun starts, forming his words slowly, “what your future might have been like, if you’d done things differently?”

Minhyuk stares at him. Kihyun can feel the intensity of his gaze on the back of his head. Minhyuk’s always had this piercing way of looking at people, when he wanted to. Beneath his cheery exterior is a hardly-seen core of ice and steel.

“No,” Minhyuk says, firmly, less of an answer than a resolution. “I do what I think is best, and don’t think about the rest of it. No regrets.”

Kihyun frowns, heart thudding, and turns to meet Minhyuk’s gaze. “What about — what if you had the chance to know what your future held? To know whether the choices you’d made were the right ones?”

“What’s the question?”

What _is_ the question, indeed. Kihyun shrugs, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Would you want to know?” he asks. “If you could know for sure. Would you want to?”

Minhyuk considers this carefully, his eyes cast down and lips twisted to one side. Kihyun can see him biting on the inside of his cheek. It’s a habit Minhyuk’s always had, when he’s concentrating really hard, or when he’s worried about something. Kihyun wonders which of those this is.

Finally, Minhyuk looks up, and shakes his head. “No,” he says. He sounds sure. “I wouldn’t want to know.”

Kihyun doesn’t know what answer he was expecting. In any case, he’s surprised. “Why?”

“Would you?”

“Don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you.”

Minhyuk peers at Kihyun curiously. “You’re being very oddly philosophical,” he says, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “What’s gotten into you lately?”

“Nothing.” But Minhyuk doesn’t stop giving him that weird look, so Kihyun rolls his eyes and adds, “Changkyun keeps going on about this space-time stuff and it’s doing my head in.”

It takes a moment, but Minhyuk’s frown relaxes, and he chuckles. “Kkukkung’s going to give us all existential crises.”

 _Yeah, no kidding,_ Kihyun thinks. But Minhyuk still hasn’t answered his question, and he really, really wants to know.

“So, anyway,” he says, trying to be breezy about it, “you haven’t said why you wouldn’t want to know.”

Minhyuk shrugs noncommittally. “Where’s the fun in knowing?”

“You think not knowing is _fun?”_

This, for some reason, makes Minhyuk laugh. “You’re so uptight about everything,” he teases. “The uncertainty is part of life. It’s what makes things worth it.”

Kihyun makes a face. “You always just jump head-first into things, don’t you?”

Minhyuk falls silent. Something in the air shifts.

“Yes, I do,” Minhyuk says quietly. “You know this.”

Kihyun does know this. He wants to look away from Minhyuk, but he can’t. His blood rushes through his ears, thundering loud enough to drown everything else out. “Do you regret it?”

“No, never.” Minhyuk smiles wryly at him. “No regrets.”

* * *

In hindsight, Kihyun should have known better.

“There’s a carnival coming to town next weekend,” was what Minhyuk had said, in the middle of their first year, in the middle of a pitch black night, his face only inches away from Kihyun’s. They were in Kihyun’s bed, because their flat was cold in the winter and it was warmer this way. Never mind that they could have turned the heating up — but that was just too expensive, what a waste of money, when they could just cuddle — and never mind that winter was already bleeding into spring.

“Mm?” Kihyun was teetering on the brink of sleep. He shuffled closer, pressing his face into Minhyuk’s chest.

“Let’s go.” Minhyuk wrapped his arms around Kihyun like it was instinct. Maybe it was. “I want to go on the bumper cars.”

Kihyun smiled at the thought of Minhyuk being let loose on the bumper cars. Everyone else should watch out. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it, then.”

A short hesitation, then Minhyuk’s fingers were trailing up and down along Kihyun’s back. “Should I ask Hyunwoo hyung and Hoseok hyung too?”

Kihyun could pretend it was just the sleepiness. But it wasn’t. His heart flipped in his stomach.

“No,” he said, quietly, an almost inaudible murmur. “Just the two of us.”

“Okay,” Minhyuk replied. And maybe Kihyun was imagining the smile in Minhyuk’s voice, but he knows now that he probably wasn’t. 

* * *

“This cotton candy is bigger than my head!” Minhyuk waved the frankly enormous stick of cotton candy in front of Kihyun’s face.

Kihyun laughed. “Which is a feat, considering the size of your head.”

“Shut up, just because your head is the size of a pea,” Minhyuk shot back, but without any force in it. He was already fumbling in his pocket to pull out his phone, struggling one-handed to get it unlocked. 

“What are you doing?”

“Let’s take a selfie, I want to remember this.”

“What, the world’s biggest stick of cotton candy?”

Minhyuk held out his arm, his phone balanced precariously between slender fingers. “No, you idiot,” he scolded, adjusting the camera angle in an attempt to get both of them, and the cotton candy marvel, into the frame. “I want to remember tonight. Being with you.”

Kihyun couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face, his shoulders curling into himself with bashful delight. Minhyuk snapped the photo, then brought his phone between their faces to inspect it. Kihyun leaned his head closer to Minhyuk’s, peering at the screen. 

The first thing he noticed was the unrestrained affection pouring out of his eyes, plain as day, for all to see. It startled him.

“We look cute together!” Minhyuk cooed, obviously overjoyed with the result. He shoved his phone back into his pocket, then turned to face Kihyun with the stick of cotton candy between them, obscuring half of his face. “What do you want to do now?”

Kihyun shrugged. His hands were a little cold. He had a sudden urge to reach out and hold Minhyuk’s free hand, the one that wasn’t clutching on to the stick of candy. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his coat instead.

“I’m a little tired,” he said, truthfully. Minhyuk had dragged them from bumper cars to merry-go-round to pirate ship to gravitron, and Kihyun kind of wanted to have solid ground beneath his feet for a while. “Let’s just have a walk around.”

Minhyuk nodded eagerly, and then something caught his eye, and he was yelling, “look, there’s a little pony!” Kihyun hurried after him to catch up, but the crowd swelled around them, and Kihyun stumbled. 

Minhyuk glanced back, giggling at Kihyun struggling to keep up. “Come here, you dumbo,” he said, voice tinkling like bells, and then he reached out to grab Kihyun’s arm. He slipped his hand into Kihyun’s, tugged him closer, the two of them careening through the carnival with abandon.

* * *

“Are you still tired?” Minhyuk asked, some time later, after they’d finished the cotton candy. He was still holding onto Kihyun’s hand, and Kihyun was still letting him. “What time do you want to head home?” 

_Never,_ Kihyun thought, unbidden. _I want to stay out here with you forever._

What he said instead, was just, “I’m not that tired anymore. What time is it?”

Minhyuk stopped walking, pulled out his phone to check the time. “Nearly midnight,” he replied, then paused. “Oh, there are meant to be fireworks at midnight!”

The excitement on his face made Kihyun smile. “Let’s stay to watch those, then.”

They had stopped beneath the ferris wheel. There weren’t many other rides in the area, and they had a pretty good view of the sky. Kihyun tipped his head back, and, next to him, Minhyuk did the same. 

They were still holding hands when the fireworks exploded in the darkness above them.

Kihyun remembers the flutter in his heart when he looked back at Minhyuk, only to see that Minhyuk was already looking at him. He remembers the way Minhyuk had smiled softly, and rubbed a thumb against the back of his hand. He remembers saying, “hey,” as quietly as a whisper, remembers Minhyuk saying, “hey,” back.

When Minhyuk leaned in to kiss him, Kihyun closed his eyes. He felt Minhyuk’s hand curve along the edge of his jawline, cupping his cheek. He felt the soft press of Minhyuk’s lips against his own, the way it sent electricity thrumming beneath his skin. He heard the breathless moan that escaped Minhyuk, the loudest thing in his ears even amidst the chattering crowd and crashing fireworks.

Kihyun had a hand on Minhyuk’s hip, just resting on the sharp jut of his hip bone, something to keep him steady. He parted his lips, let himself taste the cotton candy sweetness on Minhyuk’s tongue. 

Beneath the ferris wheel and fireworks, Kihyun kissed Minhyuk for the first time, and it felt like his heart had caught flame.

* * *

“Can I ask you something?”

Future-Minhyuk tilts his head to the side in a way that’s so eerily familiar to Kihyun, he almost jerks backwards in surprise. He squeezes his eyes shut, muttering to himself to get a grip, then opens them again. “That night, at the carnival.”

“What about it?”

“Why did you kiss me?”

Minhyuk smiles knowingly. “You’ve never asked me that before, have you?”

Kihyun looks down guiltily, shakes his head. “Will I ask you — or like, _did_ I ask you? In my future. Your past.”

When he looks back up, Minhyuk’s chuckling softly to himself. “That’s for me to know, and for you to find out.”

Even now, five years into the future, Minhyuk’s still the same old Minhyuk. Kihyun sighs good-naturedly. “You’re not going to tell me anything of use, are you?”

Minhyuk shrugs. “You already know everything you need to know.”

* * *

“What is wrong with you?”

Kihyun looks up from the sinks where he’s washing his hands. “Did you follow me to the bathroom?”

Changkyun folds his arms across his chest and taps one foot on the tiled floor. He doesn’t answer Kihyun’s question. “You’ve been acting really weird all dinner.”

“No I haven’t,” Kihyun lies. He tries to step around Changkyun to get to the hand-dryer, but Changkyun staunchly refuses to move. Kihyun gives Changkyun a pointed glare and wipes his hands dry on his jeans. “Get out of my way.”

Changkyun, predictably, does not get out of Kihyun’s way. “Did you and Minhyuk hyung have a fight?”

Kihyun grimaces, the question hitting too close to the mark for comfort. “Of course not,” he says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then why do you keep snapping at him?”

“I’m not snapping at him.”

“You’re snapping at _all of us,”_ says Changkyun, sharply, and somewhat ironically — if anyone’s snapping, right now it’s him, not Kihyun. “But especially at Minhyuk hyung.”

Kihyun closes his eyes and exhales heavily. “Look,” he says, sounding almost as exhausted as he feels, “it’s complicated.” 

Changkyun doesn’t budge. “Try me.”

Kihyun scowls. “It’s not something you would understand.” Because how is Kihyun supposed to explain how he feels about Minhyuk, when it’s not something he himself has really sorted out? When all he has is almost a decade of friendship, tangled up with a year of _maybe-something-more,_ all of that painted over with whatever the hell pretence he and Minhyuk have fallen into. He shoves fiercely past Changkyun, their shoulders bumping as Kihyun steps towards the bathroom door.

“Does this have anything to do with why Minhyuk hyung moved out?”

Kihyun freezes. He turns, slowly. “What do you know about why he moved out?”

“Nothing, because neither of you will say anything,” Changkyun replies. He looks angry. Kihyun’s rarely seen him look angry before. “But I’m not stupid. Or blind. I know that something was going on between the two of you, back when I first moved in.”

“Nothing was going on.” _Lie._

Changkyun rolls his eyes. “Hoseok hyung says you guys were best friends before, and then it got all weird for like six months,” he continues, “but now it’s back to normal. Except it’s not, is it?”

“Yes it is.” _Lie._

“You’ve been acting weird for weeks now. Like you don’t know how to behave around Minhyuk hyung.” Changkyun waves a hand in the air, frustration scrawled on his features, when Kihyun opens his mouth to respond. “Don’t tell me you haven’t, hyung. I see you guys all the time. I know when something’s up.”

Kihyun presses his lips together. Changkyun levels him with a scathing look.

“And you know what?” He scoffs lightly. “I bet Minhyuk hyung knows something’s up too.”

* * *

Minhyuk’s always had the sharpest senses. A week after the carnival, he cornered Kihyun in the kitchen, one hand pressed into the counter to block Kihyun’s only route of escape, and said, “You haven’t been the same since we kissed.”

Kihyun felt himself flinch. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit,” Minhyuk snapped. “You can’t even look me in the eye now.”

Kihyun clenched his jaw and dragged his chin up, forced himself to meet Minhyuk’s gaze. “What do you want from me?”

Minhyuk’s steely glare softened slightly. “I just want you to talk to me,” he said. “That’s all. You’re my best friend.”

“Best friends shouldn’t go around kissing each other.”

“Is that what this is about?” Minhyuk asked, voice guarded, wary. He licked his lips, tilted his head to one side. (Kihyun has every single split second of this moment memorised.) “You think it was a mistake?”

“It _was_ a mistake.” Kihyun couldn’t keep looking at Minhyuk. He focused his gaze on the handle of their fridge, shiny steel glinting behind Minhyuk.

“You kissed me back.”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Kihyun said, which was true. “I was lonely, and you were there.” That part wasn’t true.

Minhyuk released a frustrated huff of air. “Is that it?” he asked. “Is that why you did it?”

 _No._ “Yes.”

“So what do you want now? Do you want to just pretend it never happened?”

Kihyun shrugged. His heart was beating so fast — and Minhyuk standing so close to him — that he felt like he was going to pass out. “That’s probably for the best.”

Minhyuk ran one hand through his hair, nodding. He stepped away from Kihyun, and Kihyun felt the distance between them gape open. “Fine,” Minhyuk said, “if that’s what you want.”

Kihyun gave Minhyuk a curt nod, then moved to step out of the kitchen. 

“You never asked what I want,” Minhyuk said, suddenly. Kihyun froze in place, in the threshold between kitchen and living room. “You never asked why I did it.”

Kihyun didn’t turn around. “Does it matter?”

He heard Minhyuk laugh. Quietly. Bitterly. Kihyun was sure, in that moment, that he would never forget that sound. He would turn out to be right.

“No,” Minhyuk said, “I guess not.”

(And, here, a footnote: Three weeks later, Minhyuk moved out.)

* * *

After Changkyun storms back out of the bathroom, Kihyun splashes some water on his face, and follows. They’re at dinner, the seven of them. It’s not a special occasion dinner or anything, but with all their busy schedules, it isn’t often that they all get to sit down to a meal like this one. Kihyun just wishes he wasn’t feeling so — off-balance. Like he’s teetering on the edge of something, vertigo clutching at his stomach.

Next to him, Minhyuk laughs at something Jooheon says, and when he topples back in his seat, his arm brushes against Kihyun’s. It makes Kihyun flinch away in surprise, like he’s been burned. Changkyun, sitting directly across from him, gives him a pointed look, which Kihyun ignores. He looks down at his plate and attempts to pick a cherry tomato up with his fork. It rolls away from him pathetically.

“Hey, hyung,” Jooheon is saying now, leaning across the table at Minhyuk, and grinning with barely hidden delight, “tell everyone what happened at the coffee shop this afternoon.”

Minhyuk scrunches up his nose. He glances at Kihyun, then back to Jooheon. “Nothing happened,” he says, “Jooheon-ah, don’t make a fuss.”

Jooheon sits back in his seat, pouting. “I’m not making a fuss,” he whines, then decides to take it upon himself to share Minhyuk’s news for him. “You guys know Jeonghan hyung, right?”

Kihyun’s ears prick up. Jeonghan’s in the same major as Minhyuk. He’s blond, and pretty, and, by all accounts, impossibly nice. Kihyun’s eyebrows knit together as he tries to focus on the disobedient cherry tomato tumbling about on his plate.

“Is Jeonghan the really pretty one with the big eyes?” Hoseok asks, as if everyone didn’t already know exactly who Jeonghan was.

Minhyuk laughs a little sheepishly. “Yeah,” he says, “we bumped into him earlier and he asked me out on a date.”

Kihyun stabs forcefully at the cherry tomato, and this time, he succeeds. The tines of his fork piece through the tiny fruit, and clink loudly against his plate. Kihyun glances up. Everyone is looking at him — Changkyun, in particular, is eyeing him with unnerving intensity.

“What?” Kihyun pops the tomato into his mouth.

“We were just talking about Jeonghan asking Minhyuk hyung out,” Jooheon offers, innocent and bright. He beams at the group around the table. 

“Mm,” Kihyun says, shoveling some salad leaves into his mouth. He nods approvingly at Minhyuk. “Good. You should go out with him.”

Minhyuk is looking at him like he’s trying to puzzle something out. It makes Kihyun feel a little squirmish, but he forces himself to sit still. They’re just having a perfectly ordinary conversation. 

Except Kihyun doesn’t know how to be perfectly normal anymore. His limbs feel too stiff, his tongue too thick in his mouth, his every movement robotic and unnatural.

“I don’t want to go out with him.” Minhyuk’s not stopped staring at Kihyun, but Kihyun stubbornly refuses to meet his gaze.

“He’s really good-looking,” Kihyun says, “you should definitely go out with him.”

“Do _you_ want me to go out with him?”

Kihyun really, really doesn’t get why this conversation is happening. Or why it feels like they’re pretending to talk about one thing, but actually talking about another. He drops his fork back onto his plate with a clatter. “Look,” he says, hotly, “who you go out with is none of my business. I don’t fucking _care.”_

For the longest breath, no one moves. Then Minhyuk, very slowly, very purposefully, sets down his own fork and knife. He nods to himself silently.

“No,” he says. “You’ve never cared, have you?”

After he pushes his chair back and walks out of the restaurant, Hyunwoo follows him. Everyone else just stares mutely at Kihyun. Jooheon and Hoseok look like they might cry.

Changkyun glares at Kihyun. “What did I fucking tell you?”

Kihyun has nothing to say to that.

* * *

Kihyun pauses in the doorway back into the room he’d woken up in. According to future-Minhyuk, who’d heard it from future-Kihyun, all past-Kihyun needed to do to get back to his own time was to go for a nap, and he’d wake up back in his own bed. Kihyun isn’t sure why this would work, but he isn’t inclined to challenge dream logic.

Something nags at him, though. He calls out to Minhyuk, who turns back to him.

“I just thought of something else,” Kihyun says. Minhyuk nods for him to continue, so he does, fingers clutching a little awkwardly onto the doorframe. “What happens — what happens if I don’t do it right? What if I fuck things up?”

Minhyuk looks confused. “Fuck things up how?”

Kihyun shrugs. “I know you said that everything that will happen has already happened, or whatever. But what if — what if that’s not right? Or what if I manage to screw things up so spectacularly, that this — this future, whatever this is — what if it’s gone?”

There’s a sad look in Minhyuk’s eyes as he considers this question. “I honestly don’t know,” he says, “I barely even understand how this is real. Maybe Changkyun was wrong, and what you do next _can_ change the future, in which case — I guess this version of me, and this version of Kihyun, we cease to exist.”

“I don’t want that to happen,” Kihyun blurts out, without thinking. His chest feels compressed.

Minhyuk smiles softly. “Or maybe we’ll continue existing, and you’ll just split yourself down into a parallel universe, and in your universe, Minhyuk-and-Kihyun don’t end up together.”

Kihyun digs his teeth into his bottom lip. “I don’t want that to happen, either.”

“No,” Minhyuk says, contemplative. “I guess not.”

Kihyun squeezes his eyes shut. He can feel that his lashes are faintly wet with tears. “I don’t want to fuck it up,” he says. “Again. I don’t want to fuck this up _again.”_

Minhyuk places one hand on Kihyun’s shoulder, steady and firm. He doesn’t say anything more. He doesn’t need to.

* * *

Kihyun goes straight to Minhyuk’s house, bangs on the front door until Jackson throws it open, shouts up the stairs, “for god’s sake Minhyuk, take your lover’s tiff elsewhere!” and goes stomping back into his room. 

Minhyuk comes slinking down the stairs looking distinctly unimpressed. “I put up with all your sex noises!” he shouts back, and even though Kihyun knows that this is just what their friendship is like, loud and kind of aggressive, it still makes him tense up. Not to mention everything else that already has him on edge.

Like Minhyuk, standing in the doorway, levelling him with a cold stare. “What do you want?” He sounds tired, more than anything else. 

“I think we need to talk,” Kihyun says. He glances past Minhyuk into the house, where he can see Mark come tiptoeing out of Jackson’s room in his boxers to retrieve his phone from the dining table. Mark doesn’t bother disguising the look of interest he casts over in their direction. Kihyun grimaces. “Can we go for a walk?”

Minhyuk looks like he very much wants to say no, but in the end he sighs, and nods. In the amount of time it takes for him to go upstairs and get a jacket, Kihyun’s worked himself into a panic convincing himself that Mihyuk’s not coming back. If Minhyuk notices Kihyun’s endless fidgeting when he returns, he doesn’t say anything about it.

“Um,” Kihyun starts, once they’re a little distance away from the house. “I’m sorry.” He realises with a plummeting heart that he hasn’t really thought this through, doesn’t really know what to say beyond that.

“You don’t have to apologise,” Minhyuk replies. “Honestly. I over-reacted.”

“No, you didn’t. I shouldn’t have said that I don’t care.”

Minhyuk shrugs. “It’s fine. I know you care about _me,_ as a person,” he says. “You don’t have to care about who I date. Obviously.”

This Minhyuk, closed-off and reticent, Kihyun knows him. It’s the Minhyuk of two years ago, after Kihyun had pushed him away and he’d moved out of their flat. Panic rises like bile in Kihyun's throat.

“But I do,” Kihyun says quickly. He stops, turns to face Minhyuk, and Minhyuk does the same, confusion scrawled across his face. “I do care about who you date.”

There’s a brief pause, in which Kihyun thinks Minhyuk’s breath hitches. Then the shutters come down again, and Minhyuk shakes his head. “Ki, please. I can’t do this again.”

Kihyun wants to reach out, put a hand on Minhyuk's shoulder. But it doesn’t feel like he’s allowed to. He clenches his fists in the pockets of his coat to stop himself. “Can’t do what again?”

Minhyuk fixes him with a hard stare. “You’ve been acting differently for the past few weeks,” he says, and he sounds sad about it. “It’s been giving me hope.”

“Is that — bad?”

“I’ve had hope before.”

Kihyun shivers. “Things were different, before.”

Minhyuk doesn’t look like he believes him. “Different, how?”

“I was a coward, back then,” Kihyun says. He looks down at his feet, then up at Minhyuk again. “I was afraid, and I didn’t say the things I should have said. That I wanted to say.”

A faint frown wrinkles Minhyuk’s brow. “What did you want to say?” His expression is completely inscrutable.

Kihyun takes a deep breath in, then releases it slowly. He looks up at Minhyuk, refusing to drop his gaze even though fear startles to crackle up his spine. 

“I wanted to tell you that I like you,” Kihyun says, “and that I wanted to kiss you again.”

Minhyuk doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even blink. They are standing in such silence and stillness that Kihyun wonders if the world has ground to a stop around them, if the earth has actually stopped spinning. 

And then, slowly, like the north star blinking into view — he smiles. Something inside Kihyun soars.

“I also wanted to ask you something,” Kihyun adds.

“What?”

Kihyun slips his hands out of his pockets, and slowly, very gingerly, reaches out to hold Minhyuk’s hands in his. Minhyuk looks down at their hands, then back up at Kihyun.

“I wanted to ask if you would forgive me for being a massive idiot.” Kihyun rubs slow circles into the backs of Minhyuk’s hands with his thumbs. He smiles up at Minhyuk. “And I wanted to ask if you kissed me because you liked me too. And if you still like me. And if you want to kiss me again. Oh, and — if you would like to go on a date with me.”

Minhyuk beams at him. “Yes,” he breathes, and it’s warm and soft and genuine, just the way Minhyuk is. “Yes, yes, yes, to everything.”

The second time Kihyun kisses Minhyuk, the world stands still and the stars are watching.

* * *

A post-script, or maybe a prefix, to everything else:

One day, in the middle distance between past and future, Minhyuk comes home with a tattoo on his thigh. It's a whale, leaping across Minhyuk's skin, flowers carved delicately into its side. Kihyun blinks at it in surprise when he sees it.

“What?” Minhyuk looks affronted. “You don’t like it?”

Kihyun gathers himself, shaking his head furiously. “No, no,” he says, “I love it. I just—” He trails his fingers along the skin of Minhyuk’s thigh, tracing out the shape of the whale. When he looks up at Minhyuk, he knows he’s beaming. “I just had a feeling this would be your first tattoo.”

“No way you _‘just had a feeling’,”_ Minhyuk objects, flopping down onto the sofa, but he doesn’t push it. Just curls up against Kihyun, still appraising the tattoo on his thigh with unveiled happiness. “I’ve always wanted this as my first tattoo,” he says, softly, “a whale — it could take me anywhere.”

“It’s beautiful,” Kihyun says, carding his fingers through Minhyuk’s hair, and pressing a kiss into the top of his head. “I feel like I’ve seen it before.”

Minhyuk laughs, twisting around, eyes wide as he blinks up at Kihyun. “Where on earth would you have seen it before?”

Kihyun can feel the laughter, the giddy happiness, building up inside him. “I don’t know.” He grins, places his fingers on Minhyuk’s chin,and tips his chin up ever so slightly. “Maybe in a dream.”

“You’re so weird,” Minhyuk says, rolling his eyes, but he’s beaming. He leans forward, presses his lips into Kihyun’s. It draws a little squeak of surprise from Kihyun, which Minhyuk uses as his chance to slip his tongue into Kihyun’s mouth, and this time the sound that escapes Kihyun is more like a groan of pleasure. He slides his hands under Minhyuk’s shirt, and Minhyuk smiles into the kiss, and all Kihyun can taste is love, love, love.

* * *

(At some unidentified point in what we might call the future, depending on your point of view, Kihyun will tell Minhyuk that his wish on the shooting stars had come true. Minhyuk won’t believe him, at first, but then he will.

Kihyun will also ask Minhyuk what he’d wished for, that night. Minhyuk will refuse to say, but when Kihyun asks if his wish has been granted, Minhyuk will look at him long and hard, eyes overflowing with love, and say, “Yes, I do believe it has.”

And, because this story also takes place in the past, here is another thing we know: Kihyun doesn’t make any more shooting star wishes. He already has everything he’s ever wanted.)

**Author's Note:**

> this kihyuk idea popped into my head and wouldn't let me go and then it turned into this 10k monster why am I like this (please kudo/comment if u liked it!)
> 
> all the thanks in the world to [ellie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/elliebell), who knows close to nothing about mx but still read this over, you're the best
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/notionxally) | [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/notionxally)


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